


In The Shadow of the Valley

by DictionaryWrites



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Complicated Relationships, Fear, Gen, Haunting, Horror, M/M, Monsters, Plot, Power Dynamics, Spiders, Web Avatar Martin Blackwood, the beholding (the magnus archives) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:38:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23635636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Jon had never been to his grandfather's farm before now.There's something wrong with the town of Brynwylio.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner (background), Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James/Tim Stoker (background)
Comments: 141
Kudos: 140





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is very much inspired by games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, but you definitely don't need to have played either, or any game, to get it. 
> 
> Just know that the laws of crafting and agriculture are DRASTICALLY simplified in-universe, so that crops only take a few days to grow and be harvestable, and you can make a lot more things at home, etc.

“You finished these two already, munna?” his grandmother asked as she came back into the kitchen, and Jon looked up from his place at the kitchen table, his gaze shifting over to the books on the table.

“Yes,” Jon said.

“You know,” she said, with the edge that he seemed to be hearing more and more as of recent, but he didn’t know what to make of it, “you don’t need to read all day. You’re a growing boy, and you need sunlight, exercise.”

“I took a walk in the wood this morning,” Jon said. It was not a lie: he had. He had woken from dreams of spiders infesting the house over, and had needed to get _out_ from it, even though there were no cobwebs at all in the house, because his grandmother was very focused on removing them. “I’ve had my day’s worth of sunlight.”

“Jonathan.”

“Dadi.”

She cupped his cheek, getting him to look up at her, and Jon did, feeling the warmth of her hand against his skin, the stroke of her thumb on the side of his jaw. “You look so much like your father, you know.”

“I know.”

“Come, help with the washing,” she said, and Jon set his book aside, the page marked. “Your father used to spend so much time outside, you know. He worked on your mother’s farm, when he studied for his degree, hm? You must balance these things, Jonathan.”

“I will,” Jon lied. “I’ll try.”

\--

The sky was a uniform, gunmetal grey, and Jon sat back in his seat on the train, his lips pursed loosely together, his arms folded over his chest. The rhythm of the train running over the tracks was distantly comforting, but not enough to lull him to sleep.

The nightmares had been worse, as of recent, much worse, had stopped him from sleeping more than a few hours the night before, and he could feel the vague fatigue settle in his shoulders, set heavy in the bags under his eyes, but he wouldn’t sleep again, not yet. Not on a train, where anyone might see him twitch violently, or hear him cry out.

“Ticket, sir?” asked the inspector, and Jon reached into his inside pocket, handing it over.

“Have you been before?” she asked as she clipped it neatly. “To Brynwylio?” The pronunciation was not what Jon had expected, but he didn’t voice it, merely internalising it, carefully: Bryn-_oi_-li-o. Brynwylio.

“No,” Jon said. “It’s set at the base of the valley, isn’t it? On the coast?”

“Yeah,” she said, looking at Jon’s face critically for a moment, as though she were searching for something in it, although for what, Jon couldn’t say. “You got family there, is it?”

“I used to,” Jon said.

This was, apparently, the correct answer: the inspector’s expression softened, and she nodded her understanding, handing the ticket back. “Have a good day, sir.”

“Thank you,” Jon said. “Ah… Diolk?”

The inspector smiled at him, and said, “Diol_ch_,” emphasising the “ch” from the back of her throat. “But you won’t much need Welsh in Brynwylio.”

“Won’t I?”

She didn’t answer him, moving down the train’s corridor, and Jon looked back to the window, at the desaturated greens of the fields that passed him by, and settled back in his chair again.

Handing in his week’s notice had been surprisingly easy. He’d expected token resistance, at least, but even _he_ knew enough about an office’s workings to know that he was unpopular, no matter his ability, and he had gone very quietly, ignoring the potential horror of a leaving party.

He had savings. The plan was, really, to go out to farm in Brynwylio, stay for a bit, perhaps do what needed to be done to sell it on.

Perhaps he’d finally write that book.

When the train began to cut through a surprisingly narrow cut into the valley side, rushing through a tunnel, he expected it to go on to somewhere else, to open up again, but the train slowly clattered to a stop.

“Croeso i Brynwylio. Nesaf…”

Jon shouldered his satchel, moving down the train and pulling his suitcase out from the luggage rack. He was not the only person to exit onto the platform – at the other end of the platform, he saw an old man in a very expensive-looking suit exit, glancing down at an honest-to-God pocketwatch before he made his way off the platform and down the path.

The station was cut into a section of mountainside, sheer cliff at the edges like the edges of a quarry, with no car park, no spaces for cars. A sign read _Croseo i Brynwylio_ on the platform, and Jon stepped toward the little shed that seemed to suffice for a ticket office, but there was no light inside, and it didn’t look as if it had been open for years. A few scant leaflets poked out from a battered plastic tray, but they were all for entertainments in Aberystwyth, and none of them seemed to take into account Brynwylio itself.

He was glad he had thought to print himself a small map of Brynwylio – he had no phone signal to speak of, and he set his jaw slightly as he dragged his suitcase behind him, listening to its regular _clack-clack_ and ignoring the ache in his arm as he dragged it over the rail station’s cobble paving.

Cut into the valleyside, the town of Brynwylio was arranged on a great many shelfs of land, steps and meandering pathways leading between the different stretches of road, and once he exited the once-quarry that made up the rail station, Jon was arrested, lingering on the top road. Like this, he could see right down to the bottom of the valley, where grey beach gave way to the Irish Sea. To his surprise, on the different plateaus of space, there was undoubtedly farmland – he could see a few stretches of land here and there, planted neatly with rows of crop, nestled between thatches of woodland – that would be crucial, he supposed, the need for the roots to keep the valley in place.

The walk to the farmhouse was longer than he would have liked.

The main roads were tarmacked, but that tarmac crumbled to pieces at the edges, giving way to the muddy dirt paths of the woodland either side, and there were potholes all over, potholes that caught the wheels of his suitcase before he realised and made him stumble or lose his balance. Pieces of grit and stone kept getting stuck in the wheels, but he didn’t let himself stop short, wanting to just make it to the damn place – _then_ he could sit down.

Mercifully, it did not rain. The sky remained a distantly foreboding grey, but no cloud formed on the horizon, and the wan light from the sun at least provided a little warmth, making the day comfortably mild.

The train journey to Aberystwyth from Brynwylio was only thirty minutes, and Jon couldn’t help but imagine his father getting his train every morning, heading up to the university, before coming back down here in the evening. It had been far cheaper rent, to live and work a little on the farm, even with the price of the train factored in, and his father had always been a man careful with his money.

Coming over the boundary of the old Balch Farm, Jon stopped for a few moments and surveyed the stretch of field, overgrown with weeds, brambles and berries, tree stumps, great stones. It was overlooked by a farm house, a white building with a red-tiled roof, and to Jon’s surprise, it seemed to be in remarkably good repair – the walls were clean and without cracks or ivy, and as he walked up, stepping to the door, he leaned to peer in the window, and saw furniture still in place, a sofa, a rug…

Unlocking the door, he stepped inside, feeling about for a light switch, but found none. Sighing, he set his suitcase inside the door, flicking on the torch on his phone, and he stared with curiosity at a well-appointed hall, at the rug in the corridor, the varnished boards of the stairs.

The living room had wood siding in place of wallpaper, and a turquoise carpet: the sofas were wood-sided and faced one another, over a matching coffee table, a rocking chair set off to the side. There was no television, no electrical outlets, although he could see what looked like oil lamps on the walls, as well as a great, stone fireplace, and a set of bookshelves covered one wall. The windows had a decorate grille between the room and the glass, and he found the same on the kitchen windows. The kitchen was small, cleanly appointed, without a fridge, and when he opened a door, expecting a pantry, he instead saw a set of stone steps leading down into a very chilly cellar.

Jon closed that door again very quickly.

It was strange.

The two bedrooms were empty – one bed had a mattress on top of it, still, as well as an empty wardrobe and chest of drawers, but the other bedroom, which was far smaller, had one bed frame that had been turned on its side and set against the wall. A desk and chair, as well as a wardrobe and chest of drawers, were still in the room, and it was appointed in deep greens – this had been his mother’s room.

On the ceiling, painted in his mother’s flowing, dream-like style, was a mural depicting all the constellations, and Jon thought back to his grandmother’s photo albums, the myriad photographs of his mother wrapped about the top edge of a ladder, head tilted back, hands up-stretched with brush in hand.

His father’s old room – the attic bedroom – still had a bed with a mattress, two sets of drawers, and an old, handsome desk set against the window, overlooking the farm’s field, and the stream that meandered some ways below. In the middle of the field, he could see a fairly large pond, one with surprisingly bright waters, and in the distance, the coast.

This room _did_ have electrical outlets, a few of them set under the desk, and Jon sighed, resigning himself to bringing his suitcase all the way up the stairs. This room, too, was strangely clean – and there was a grille on the bedroom window, as there had been on all the bedroom windows, and even the little one in the bathroom.

No dust, no cobwebs, nothing. Clean, fresh – empty, but with a sense of recent…

Not occupation, but _presence_.

Slowly descending the stairs, he turned off the torch on his phone – enough light came in through round window over the door that he could see, and that meant he saw the shine in the eyes of the spider on the bottom step. It was massive. Far bigger than it ought to have been, and Jon stopped stockstill, completely arrested, feeling a small noise catch in his throat.

The spider was still, but it hadn’t been there before, its great legs splayed. It shifted, just slightly, and Jon heaved in a choked gasp, his grip on the stair’s bannister suddenly so tight it hurt his fingers.

What now?

What?

He didn’t know for how long he stood there, still in place, staring at the great spider, trying not to move, not to cry, not to _breathe_. What was he going to do? Jump over the bannister? And then what – what if the sudden movement startled it, sent it scurrying off into the house? What if it lingered here, forever, what if it build its web over him while he was sleeping, what if someone _knocked_, KNOCK KNOCK…

The door opened, and Jon cried out, falling back on the stairs, his arms covering his face, hands clenching in his hair, and all he could think of was bristling hair, a scribbled children’s book style, and mandibles, mandibles, a bulbous, stretched abdomen, _Mr Spider_—

“Hi, hey, hey,” said a soft voice, a hand brushing his shoulder, and Jon flinched back, gasping, and looked into the round, pink-cheeked face of someone who was, without a doubt, a man, and not a spider. Jon was aware he was shaking violently, his hands clenched tightly, overlong nails cutting into the fabric of his palms, and the man very gently took him by the wrists with tender care, pulling him to his feet. “Hey, it’s alright, come with me. Here, come, come with me, come sit down.”

Jon couldn’t speak, not to protest, not to question, as the big man – and he was big, over six feet tall, with his hair a mess about his head, and heavy, built like a rugby player – set him down onto one of the sofas. He went away and returned, putting a mug of hot tea in Jon’s hands, and Jon stared down at it, then looked up at him.

“You have a key to my house,” he said.

“Yes,” the man said. “My nan used to know Mr Falch. I come in twice a week to keep it tidy. You’re, um, you’re his grandson, I suppose?”

“The spider, where…?”

“Oh, I caught it under a pint glass, it’s in the kitchen,” the man said placatingly. “I know it looks very intimidating, but they’re actually alright – it’s a giant house spider, Eratigena atrica, um, they do, they can bite, but not unless provoked, and they really don’t mean you any harm.”

Jon sipped at the tea. He was aware he was rocking just slightly, and he flinched as the man gently placed a blanket around his shoulders.

“You’re a nurse?” Jon asked.

The man stared at him. “I, um, not— No. I care for my mum, _used_ to care for my mum.”

“I see. You keep spiders?”

“Some tarantulas. Um, how—”

“Why are there grilles on all the windows?”

“The wind can get very strong in winter, how—”

“You’re English, as well, you came here to care for your mother?”

“Yes, I did, I— _Look_, my _name_ is Martin.”

Jon stared, blankly, at the hand Martin offered.

“You’re supposed to shake it,” Martin said.

His hand was warm, and big, and strong.

“If you need help, um, with getting oriented or anything, just let me know,” Martin said. “I’ll take that spider out. Sorry I didn’t knock, I didn’t know you were here. What’s your name?”

“Jon,” Jon said. “Jonathan.”

“Are you very scared of spiders, Jon?”

Jonathan drank heavily from his tea, and Martin reached into his pocket, pulling out a battered notebook and ripping a piece of paper out of the back of it. “You should have phone signal on the property,” he said, as he wrote down his phone number. “You can call me, if you need help, um, with anything. Spiders included.”

“Is this your way of flirting?” Jon asked.

Martin’s mouth opened and closed, a sort of gibbering noise coming out of his mouth, and he blushed furiously as he finished putting down the digits. “Sorry,” he said. “Just—You know, if you need. Um, I’ll just, I’ll go.”

Jon watched Martin as he went into the kitchen, coming back out with the pint glass, its captive staring dolefully out. He shuddered, and didn’t relax again until he heard the door shut behind him, his gaze going to the window.

It was a strange pattern, on the grille. Little diamonds in bigger diamonds, with the main bars going through the middle, like the pupils in eyes. From behind it, Jon watched Martin walk over the field, to the other edge, where the stream cut a line between his property and the next, and disappeared.

Jon drank his tea, and thought of spiders.

\--

Most of the cupboards in the kitchen were empty, but there were containers of tea and sugar that were half-full, a stack of (antique) pots and pans laid neatly beneath the sink, and in a set of tall cupboards, he found an ironing board and an old-fashioned iron, as well as lamp oil and matches.

The matches were as old as he was, but they still worked, and he lit one of the hand-held lamps, feeling the warmth that came from the oil. It felt more natural than he had expected, more intuitive – there was a charm in how old-fashioned it was, a pleasing quaintness, and Jon felt himself relax – however marginally – as he held the lamp in hand, descending the steps into the stellar.

With a lit wick, he lit the cellar’s lamps, and let out a breath he’d not even realised was festering in his lungs when he scanned the room, its ceilings, its floors, and saw no webs to speak of, and no small, scuttling things, either. Against one wall were a few wine racks, a dozen or so dusty bottles of claret set into them, and a few kegs with handwritten labels. Preserves jars settled in neat rows, and there was a row of small furnaces, too – for refining ore, he thought.

Approaching a workbench, he wiped it clear of dust – there _was_ dust down here in the cellar, and Jon suspected that Martin had never, or didn’t often, come down into it. In the chest were a few tools – a scythe, a hoe, a hammer, an axe…

There was as yet time in the day, and Jon was loath to begin unpacking.

He’d brought enough food to start with, anyway – rice and coconut milk, a set of spices, eggs. Enough to feed him for the evening, and seek out whatever served the area of Brynwylio as a shop.

\--

The sunset found Jonathan Sims still in the frontmost section of his field, stripped down to his shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and his hair tied up in a loose bun. His shoulders and back _ached_, but to his surprise, there was a satisfaction in it, and he had sown some scattered seeds he’d picked up whilst weeding, planted in neat, orderly rows, roughly separated by what sort of seed they appeared to be, that the rows matched.

Stacked wood from discarded stumps and branches was laid in the woodshed adjoining the house, and he’d dropped what stone he’d pulled away into the stone shed a little ways off. There was a silo, too, and an old shed that was mostly empty, but did house another workbench and a few storage chests.

“What about the farm in Brynwylio?” he remembered asking, when he was a young man, fourteen. “Is it still there?”

“Your mother cleared it out after your grandfather died – your grandmother had died years before. It’s empty, now.”

“What a waste,” Jon remembered saying.

He didn’t remember her reply.

“Mr Sims,” came a voice from behind him, and Jon turned, holding his scythe loosely in hand, dragging to him a sack of plant fibre. The man that stood at the edge of the field, his little heeled boots scrupulously avoiding its dirt surface, was neatly appointed, wearing a dark blue coat over a suit, and leather gloves. A top hat wouldn’t have looked out of place on his head of dark hair, which, like Jon’s, was giving way to grey at its temples. This man was older than Jon, though, looking to be in his fifties, and there was an expectation in his pose, the way he looked at Jon. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” Jon replied. This man had an English accent, too, crisp, clean – posh, and _real_ posh, not like Jon’s manufactured tones. “Welcoming committee, are you?”

“My name is Elias Bouchard,” the man said – he was a little under average height even with his boots, shorter than Jon himself, but he didn’t lean back as Jon came closer, looking at him seriously. “I’m Brynwlio’s mayor.”

“Mayor?” Jon repeated, smiling as he walked beneath his rows of planted seed, but it was more of a sneer to look at, and he knew it.

“Quite,” Bouchard said. “I merely wanted to welcome you to Brynwylio.” He gestured behind him, to a wrapped box on Jon’s front bench, a wooden crate wrapped in golden ribbon. “A small hamper from the Stokers in town. Some staples for you, some seed packets… And ah, this…” Bouchard stepped back, knocking his knuckles against a wood storage container. “They do buy produce from local farmers, so just pop anything you’d like to sell on in here.”

“Very kind of them, and you, I’m sure,” Jon said.

“We’re a very tight-knit community,” Bouchard said pleasantly. “You aren’t a farmer by trade, I take it?”

“I was in research,” Jon said. “Wanted a change of pace.”

“You’ll certainly find that in Brynwylio,” Bouchard murmured. “Do forgive me – the hour grows late, and I must get home. You really oughtn’t stay out after dark, Mr Sims.”

“Going to arrest me, are you?”

Bouchard laughed, a low chuckle steeped in something rich and poisonous. His blue eyes glinted in what little golden light was left in the day. “It isn’t that you’re not _allowed_, Mr Sims.”

The hamper had a mix of local produce – strawberries and some apples, a cabbage, a sack of potatoes; milk and eggs; curry powder and flour. Jon took out the seed packets immediately, examining each of them – all made for a spring sow…

_Dear Jon,_

_Welcome to Brynwylio! Here’s just a little pack to welcome you in, free of charge – come into us some time this week and say hello!_

_Wishing you well,_

_Timothy & Daniel Stoker_

There was a phone number printed on the back of the card, as well as the neat address of Stoker & Co., a grocer’s and general store in Brynwylio’s central square. Jon set it aside to put in the kitchen, later, and went back to the seeds.

He planted the rest in neat rows, taking up the rest of the plot he had cleared, and he stood with his hands on his hips, looking out over the rest of his field as the sun finally sank beneath the horizon, leaving the sky a deep, syrupy red.

Bouchard’s warning had been ridiculous, but Jon felt a pull toward the house nonetheless, a quiet desire to go inside, to make himself a meal, to sit beside the fire built with wood he’d chopped himself, and be safe.

Setting his scythe on his shoulder, he walked up the path to the house, and brought in his supplies. He closed all the curtains in the house before he even realised what it was he was doing, and pondered the decision for some hours afterward.

\--

Brynwylio was a small town, but not as small as Jon had initially thought.

Walking into the central square, he saw more businesses than he’d have expected in amongst the houses – the Stokers’ shop took pride of place, beside an adjoining doctor’s surgery; there were a few pubs; a gym; a library. A sign pointed the way to a blacksmith’s and a ranchers’ supply shop, as well as to a tailor’s, a milliner’s. The undertaker’s shop was a few streets over, he was informed, beside the town carpenter – the carpenter made the coffins to order.

The Stokers’ shop was larger than he’d have expected, and far more brightly lit, for a small town, and stepping inside, he looked at the many rows of products, the food supplies, the seed packets, little pieces of sundry.

As he looked for tinned tomatoes, he found himself neatly turning the other tins face outward, setting them more neatly on the shelves, and he was so concentrated in his task that he jolted at the presence of a tall man in a grocer’s apron beside him, a grin on his face.

“You must be the new farmer from London way,” he said. “I didn’t know you’d be so anal.”

“Everybody seems to know about me,” Jon said tersely. “What, did your mayor put it in the newsletter?”

The man’s grin widened.

“Oi, Danny,” he called over the shelves. “Jon Sims thinks Elias is a prick, as well.”

“I— I didn’t say that!”

“He is, though,” said Danny, leaning around a shelf. He was shorter than his brother, and his expression was a little more serious. “You don’t look like a farmer.”

“I’m giving it a go,” Jon said in a monotone, and the other Stoker snickered, clapping him on the shoulder.

“There’s a guy across the stream from your farm, Martin Blackwood. He does odd jobs around time, he can probably help you out as a farmhand.”

“I wouldn’t want to distract him from his spiders,” Jon muttered, picking a tin of tomatoes from the shelf and dropping it into his basket.

“I’m Tim,” said the tall man, putting out his hand, and Jon shook it. “Me or Danny run the shop seven days a week, except for festival days. Let us know if there’s anything in the shop you need that you don’t see, and we’ll order it in – all of our produce is from local farmers, but we can try to get hold of anything else you need.”

“Thank you,” Jon said.

“We can give you directions or advice around town, too,” Danny said. “For example, when you go into the library, try not to piss off Gertrude. That woman is a battle-ax.”

“Who says I’m going to go to the library?”

Danny smiled at him, raising his eyebrows. “What, you’re trying to tell me you’re _not_?”

He was uncomfortably charming. Jon was not happy being charmed.

Danny seemed to realise this, and his smile faded slightly, but not entirely: he gave Jon a nod, and walked toward the back of the shop.

“A family enterprise, I suppose,” Jon said, walking with Tim toward the till, and Tim nodded his head. It was an old-fashioned till, made of polished steel, complete with a bell, and Tim apparently did the pricing calculations in his head, noting down the items Jon had picked out in shorthand in a journal. There was electricity in the store – there were refrigerated shelves, and the lights in the place were electric, but each label on the shelves was hand-written, and he noted that many of the products lacked barcodes.

“A hundred-and-sixteen years and counting,” Tim said, giving Jon a smile. “There’s an ATM in the bank, across from the mayor’s office, but it’s the only one in town. For everything we take out of your shipping container, we’ll do a bank transfer once a week – you don’t need to itemise it or anything, we’ll do that, but I understand if you want to itemise stuff to keep us accountable. Pretty much all the businesses around here will take cash or check, but no one really has their own card machine.”

“There are barely any electrical outlets in my house,” Jon said.

“Mine neither,” Tim said.

“You don’t find that odd?”

Tim shrugged. “Brynwylio is kind of old-fashioned, in more ways than one, mate. You’ll find that as you go on.”

“Where would I go about buying a fridge?”

“There should be a cold cabinet in your cellar,” Tim said, and when Jon gave him a funny look, he said, “Pretty much all the old farmhouses were built the same year, 1832, and they all have a cellar, two bedrooms, bathroom, living room, kitchen. Same blueprint.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Six,” Tim said. “There’s Balch Farm, that’s yours, and then there’s Black Lodge, that belongs to the Maxwells, Amerst Farm and Paper Fields, they’re right next to each other, Pine Ranch and Beech Way, they both belong to the Lukases. Paper Fields is owned by the Keays, and Pine Ranch and Beech Way are rented.”

“You’re very knowledgeable about these things,” Jon murmured.

“The librarians talk about it a fair bit,” Tim said. “But you’ll find it all sinks in. Knowing things.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, Balch Farm,” Tim said, shrugging his shoulders. “You’d have to, wouldn’t you?”

Jon frowned, not quite knowing what that meant, but Tim was already handing him a neatly made canvas bag.

“Um, Jon, you don’t eat meat, do you?” Tim asked.

“No, I don’t,” Jon said, and then turned his head, looking back to the fridge. There was no meat in it, he realised. Eggs and milk from local farms, fresh jams and preserves, butter, cheese, but no meat, not even bacon. There were various fish products, but that was all. “You ask because I wouldn’t be able to buy it from you?”

“You’d have to go to the Haans, their shop is up at the top of the town, round the corner from the mines’ entrance. But, hey, if you don’t eat meat, no problem.”

Tim Stoker looked relieved.

“There’s something very strange about this town,” Jon said.

Tim smiled, and there was nothing forced in it, but it still rang false as he said, “You’ve spent too long in London, Jon. Just getting used to a friendly little town, that’s all.”

“Does Danny deliver that line better, Tim?” Jon asked.

Tim actually smiled at that. It was a slightly vicious smile. “You’re _such_ a prick,” he said. “You’ll fit in here. Look, a few of us are going out for drinks tonight at Helen’s. You should join us.”

“I’m a prick, so I should join you for drinks?”

“I’ll tell you a secret, Jon,” Tim said, leaning in and putting on a stage whisper, “I’m a bit of a prick, too.”

Jon exhaled a short laugh, partly to disguise the uncertainty he felt at actually being invited out somewhere, but then he gave a neat nod of his head, and Tim winked at him.

“Come meet us at seven, before it gets dark,” Tim said. “One of us’ll walk you home.”

Jon considered questioning this, but elected not to, merely murmuring his thanks and turning on his heel to go. He didn’t go into the library right away, instead walking down the streets, looking at the different houses, each of them with neat grilles on their windows.

Some had designs like Jon’s, the diamonds inside one another – others had grilles that were almost like spiders’ webs, or zigzagging lines; others reminded him of flames, and others still were plain grating. He didn’t think he saw a window without some form of grating, even on shop windows.

Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice.

The library was a beautifully appointed building, and Jon could tell as soon as he stepped inside that it was one of the other original buildings in town: stained glass windows painted the design of an owl on the central floor, and Jon stopped on the threshold, looking around at all the shelves, smiling to himself.

“Excuse me,” he said quietly to the woman working at the central desk, a young woman with glasses and long hair. “Are you Gertrude?”

“No, I’m Sasha,” she said, looking up. “Can I help?”

“I just wanted to sign up for a library card,” Jon said, and Sasha nodded her head, standing to rifle through a drawer for the right document. She had no computer, no monitor, no keyboard; he saw no printer, and a cursory scan of the library did not reveal the rows of neat computer monitors he’d come to expect, nor a public photocopier.

“Here,” Sasha said, putting forward the document. “Welcome to Brynwylio, Jon.”

“Not even going to wait for me to write it down?” Jon asked. “Pretend you didn’t know?”

“There’s not really any pretending here,” Sasha said, with a shrug of her shoulders, and Jon smiled, but couldn’t shake the slight discomfort that twisted in his belly as he began to note down the salient details – his name, his date of birth, his address. “Will you be joining us at Helen’s tonight?”

Jon glanced up at her.

“Tim mentioned he’d ask you,” Sasha said.

“Good Lord,” Jon muttered. “Word _does_ travel fast.”

“It’s not going to be too many of us, but you can meet Helen, and it’ll be me and Tim, a bloke called Martin—”

“I’ve met Martin.”

“Rosie, she works in the mayor’s office, Basira and Daisy, they’re both on the police force, and Melanie King, she might come out.”

“And what does Melanie do?”

“She’s a journalist for the Brynwylio Echo.”

“Right, well,” Jon said. “It’s very kind of you to invite me, I’m sure.”

He handed back the paper, and he watched as Sasha handwrote a library card for him, printed with the same owl the stained glass in the ceiling made.

“Ah,” said an elderly woman, flanked by a tall man swimming in an overlarge, flowing shirt. “You must be Jonathan Sims. I knew your mother.”

“Gertrude, I take it,” Jon said, putting out his hand to shake it. The old woman had a firm grip and a severe gaze, but Jon didn’t flinch away from it: she seemed to approve of this, and raised her chin slightly.

“You’re returning Balch Farm to its former glory?” Gertrude asked, her tone sardonic.

“I’m planting seeds,” Jon said.

“Good,” Gertrude said, and walked past him. The tall man lingered, looking at Jon thoughtfully, but he didn’t say anything, moving quickly after Gertrude, and Jon looked to Sasha.

“That’s Michael,” Sasha said. “He’s actually quite chatty, once he knows you a bit.”

“Right,” Jon said, putting his new library card into his pocket. “Well, erm, thank you. I’ll see you later.”

“Make sure to walk out to us before sundown,” Sasha said.

“Yes, Tim said that too.”

“One of us—”

“—will walk me home,” Jon finished. “Yes.”

Sasha gave him a very small smile, a comforting one, Jon supposed. “I know it all seems weird. But it will… make sense. Later.”

“If you say so,” Jon said, and took up his shopping once again.

\--

Jon planted more seeds, and watered the shoots that had already sprouted up.

He chopped wood, cleared stone, cleared weeds.

The sun rose in the sky, and began to sink beneath the horizon. The walk to Helen’s was longer than he expected, and the darkening sky above him made his skin prickle in a way that _ought_ have been irrational, but was not.

Helen’s Bar had spirals on its window grilles.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](https://twitter.com/DictionaryWrite/status/1251254866372169732) is a little Jon!

Helen’s bar had a roaring fire inside, and as soon as Jon stepped over the threshold, he felt himself relax slightly and sigh, the immediate heat in the room settling warm and comfortable over his skin, sinking down against his skin.

The room was dominated by a long, antique bar built of stacked, cemented stone with a heavy wood top, and behind the bar he saw hundreds of different bottles, virtually all of them with hand-painted labels – fruit of the valley, just as stocked by the Stokers’ shop. Lined up against the bar were a fair few people on barstools, talking with one another, and many of the tables were full up with people. Around one table, he saw a set of ancient old men playing with dominos that looked to be made of some sort of carved, painted ivory; against one wall, a tired-looking man in his fifties was playing what looked like a game of Trivial Pursuit with four straight-faced young people in their twenties. He looked stressed about it.

He didn’t see Tim or Sasha in the main room, but two archways led in different directions, one going past the bar toward the back of the building, and the other to the righthand side. This room had a high, wood-arched ceiling, and around the fireplace at its far end, past a few rows of square table, a group of armchairs and sofas were haphazardly arranged around a central, square coffee table.

Jon could see Tim Stoker sitting in a high-backed armchair, a cigar in his mouth as he gesticulated widely, and even from far across the room Jon could hear the faux-posh ridiculousness he was putting into his voice, lisping every “s” into a “ch” sound until it sounded like he had a mouth full of pound coins.

Beside him, Sasha was laughing with her face crammed into her hands, stamping her feet on the ground, and curled up together on one sofa, a lanky, wolfish woman in the lap of a shorter, handsome woman were laughing too. They laughed like one another, Jon thought – quiet, muted, almost _serious_ for being full of humour.

“I just hope you know,” said a woman in dark glasses sat cross-legged on the rug, her back against the open fireplace, “I’m imagining you with a monocle.”

Tim laughed so hard he spat the cigar out, and then jumped up, shouting as he whipped it up from his trousers to keep from letting them burn. Jon felt like an intruder as he came up on the group, slipping between an armchair and an empty sofa, but as soon as Sasha saw him, she grinned.

“Jon, you came out after all! Daisy, Basira, Melanie, this is Jon Sims. He’s come back to fix up Balch Farm.”

“Thought that farm’d stay empty forever,” said the wolfish woman.

“Oh, you’re actually Welsh,” Jon said, blurting it out, and she raised an eyebrow even as she put out her hand to shake is. The woman beneath her – Basira, he presumed – made no attempt to remove the hands she had loosely knotted around her waist, and Jon didn’t put out his hand to shake hers, hoping it was the correct interpretation of that particular social cue.

“Yeah,” she said. She had a quiet, husky voice. “There’s one or two of us in Brynwylio yet.”

Jon put out his hand to the woman on the ground, bending awkwardly, and there was a long pause, her lips pressed together, as she looked at his hand. He swallowed, wondering if this was another silent communication, but Sasha said, “Melanie, the man is trying to give you his hand.”

“Oh, right,” said Melanie. “God, you’re old-fashioned, aren’t you?” But with that, she did reach up, touching the inside of Jon’s wrist with two fingers before slipping her hand in place in his, squeezing tightly as she shook his hand.

“Melanie’s blind,” Sasha said.

“Oh, right,” Jon said. “Sorry.”

“What?” Melanie said. “For having eyes, and rubbing them in my face? Don’t worry, mate. Can’t see them.”

“I… right,” Jon said, and he turned— and jolted. “_Christ_, Michael.”

Michael looked at him silently from where he was folded up in the armchair Jon had walked past, his eyes slightly wide, his lips parted. He was not at all an intimidating man – long-limbed and round-featured, set up as he was in the chair, his knees up against his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs, nestled in the midst of his long, blond curls, he evoked images, for Jon, of a marionette set down for the evening.

“I didn’t see you there,” Jon said, quieter this time, and beside him, Daisy barked out a laugh. It wasn’t necessarily nasty in tone, but it was louder than he expected, and he glanced at her as she gestured to the other half of the sofa she and Basira were sat on. Jon sank slowly down, awkwardly shrugging out of his coat and hanging it loosely on the corner of the sofa.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to _warn_ you,” said Michael, softly. It was an unexpected voice, slightly nasal and meandering in pitch, and when he laughed, it was like no laugh Jon had ever heard before.

“The smoking ban hasn’t reached Brynwylio, I see,” Jon said, and Tim stared at him, then looked at Daisy and Basira.

“Smoking’s illegal now?” he asked, and Jon thought it was a joke, but Basira answered in all seriousness when she replied.

“Inside, yeah. You’re not allowed to smoke in business establishments,” she said quietly. “Everyone has to smoke outside.”

“Oh, shit,” Tim said, nodding his head. “Interesting.”

“Looking the other way this time?” Jon asked, and Basira snorted.

“It’s not really the same here,” she said. “So, you a farmer?”

“Not at all, no,” Jon said.

“You thought you’d give everything up and live life peacefully for a while, hm?” asked Melanie, in a funny tone, and Jon nodded, but then remembered.

“Yes.”

“A lot of people do that,” Melanie said.

“None of you are farmers, I take it?” Jon asked.

“We have a greenhouse,” Basira said. “But that’s Daisy’s domain.”

“We grow our own fruit and veg,” Daisy said. “And flowers.”

Jon looked at Daisy, at her black tank top and black jeans, the thick muscle in her arms, the complicated tattoos over her shoulders. “You like flowers?” he asked.

Daisy’s teeth were quite sharp, her canine teeth slightly pronounced, and her eyes were dark. “Yeah,” she said. “I love flowers.”

Jon smiled, slightly awkwardly, and Daisy smiled back.

“What are you drinking, Jon?” Tim asked, passing his cigar to Sasha, who immediately put it in her own mouth, sitting back with her legs crossed beneath her in the chair.

“I’m, um, not sure,” Jon said. “I’ll go with you.”

“Everyone want the same round?” Tim asked, and when he was met with an affirmative, he led Jon back toward the bar.

The bartender was a woman in a yellow suit, the jacket rolled up to the elbows, and underneath it she wore a psychedelic blouse with the collar splayed wide: when she saw Jon, she grinned, and put her hand out over the bar. “You must be Jonathan.”

“Helen, I presume?” Jon asked, and she nodded, shaking his hand. Her hand felt… odd. Unnaturally bony, and somehow sharp, so much so that when Jon drew back his hand he looked at it for cuts, and was almost surprised when he saw none.

“So, everything you see, local product,” Helen said, gesturing to the shelves behind her, and Jon looked at the myriad of glass bottles, their contrasting colours and variety of labels. “Pale ales here, these are different lagers, these are hoppier, these are stouts… I’m seeing a blank look here. You like wine, Jon?”

“Yes,” Jon said, and Helen held up one long finger, reaching under the bar and bringing up a bottle, pouring a little of it into a wine glass before pushing it toward him.

“Give that a try.”

Jon picked it up as Helen started on the round for everybody else, inhaling the scent before he took a mouthful onto his tongue, tasting it carefully. Tim was watching him with a grin on his face, as if a man tasting wine was the most entertaining thing he’d ever witnessed.

He tried to ignore it as he said, “This is lovely. Is it a merlot?”

“It’s blackberry wine,” Helen said, grinning. “You see that young gentleman in the corner, with the sketchbook? That’s Gerry Keay, he makes this. You want a glass?”

“Please,” Jon said, nodding, and he reached into his pocket for his wallet, but Tim caught him by the wrist.

“Ah ah,” he said. “We invited _you_ out, sweetheart. We can afford a few glasses of wine to reward you.”

“Thank you, it’s very kind,” Jon said, and he looked over to Gerry Keay.

He was sitting at a table with a very white, white-haired man about his age, and between them was the very old man that Jon had seen coming off the train when he’d come into Brynwylio, ancient and balding. Keay himself was lanky and square, a consummate goth, and he smiled lazily, talking with his hands. He leaned back heavily in his chair, a sketchbook balanced on his lap, and he rested the heel of one of his studded boots on the white-haired man’s chair, between his legs. Cognizant of Jon’s gaze on him, he turned to meet Jon’s eye, and when Jon held it, feeling it was perhaps too rude to look away, Gerry waved at him, slowly, with a shift of his fingers.

Jon returned a stout nod, and looked back to Tim.

“Where’s Martin?”

Tim glanced at him, and once more Jon caught the shadow of something unsaid before he shrugged his broad shoulders. “I suppose he couldn’t make it out. Martin does a lot of work around the village for different people, so I expect he’s tired.”

Jon nodded, looking to the windowfront of Helen’s bar. Helen, like the Stokers, had an old-fashioned steel till, and hanging from the wood frame over the bar and ceiling hooks around the room were oil lamps, matched to the candles on the tables: the fire light was warm but not extremely bright, and Jon could almost see outside into the square through the frosted glass and the grille on the window.

It was dark, but there was a colour in it, a sort of poisonous green, and he took a step away from the bar, craning his head to see under the lettering on the window. There was movement out there – slow, meandering movement, like the shift of mist in wind, and yet it triggered a strange discomfort in him, a sort of roiling dread that began to coil in his belly. There was something out there, something shapeless and shifting, something he could not make out, and he burned with curiosity – and fear. The hair was beginning to stand up on the back of his neck, a full-bodied shudder running down his spine, and yet he could not _see_, he wanted to _see_—

Gerry Keay’s hand settled on his cheek, pulling Jon to face him, and Jon felt as if he’d been shocked out of himself, staring up at him, wide-eyed. Gerry’s palm was slightly cool to the touch, and as tall as he was, Jon felt framed by him, felt strangely caged in, but in a way that was comforting rather than frightening.

“I, what just, let me—”

“Don’t look away from me,” Gerry said quietly. “Give it a minute.” Demonstratively, Gerry Keay inhaled, tipping his chin back, and then exhaled: he did it again, and again, until Jon matched his stride, and he didn’t know what it was Keay was looking for in him, but when he saw it, he gave a neat nod of his head, taking his hand back. Jon felt its chilly ghost on his cheek. “There you go. Back on solid ground.”

“What was that?” Jon asked, automatically turning his head back toward the window, and Gerry laughed, catching him by the shoulder and pulling him straight again.

“You don’t learn, do you?” Gerry asked, and he kept his arm around Jon’s shoulder, as though they were friends – as though they knew one another. There was something pleasant, grounding, about Gerry’s presence – Jon liked him immediately in the same way he’d found he did Tim and Sasha, and that made him uncomfortable.

“I like your wine,” Jon said lowly.

“Good,” Gerry said. “Stay in here with us, and drink it. You can’t control your man, Stoker?”

“I can barely control myself, Keay,” Tim said, but he was friendly as he said it, and Jon didn’t think he missed the playful look that passed between them, the sense of… flirtation. “Anyway, this is his first night out. Cut him a bit of slack.”

“No one will tell you what’s going on, will they?” Gerry asked, taking his arm away, and Jon shook his head.

“As you can imagine, I don’t care for it,” he said crisply, and as Tim smiled, Gerry chuckled, giving a little nod of his head.

“It’s best to take it in piece by piece at first, to let your mind digest,” Gerry murmured. “But if in a week’s time you still don’t feel you’ve got it, I’ll give you the long and short of it.”

“If he’s alive in a week’s time,” said the old man from the train, and Jon looked at him. He said it very cheerfully, his ancient skin puckering and wrinkling with the shift of his eyes and his mouth at the wideness of his smile, and Jon looked down at him, frowning. “Simon Fairchild. Elias was very excited you were coming to town.”

“Hello,” Jon murmured, shaking his hand. “Our illustrious mayor?”

“Do I detect a hint of sarcasm in your tone, young man?” he asked, sounding delighted, and Tim tapped Jon on the shoulder.

“Help me with these, would you?” he asked, and Jon was grateful for the opportunity to get away – tonight was far too many people at once, and there was something overwhelming in it. He took a small tray as Tim took his and Sasha’s drinks, but just before lifting it, he was suddenly aware that Helen’s had gone very, very quiet.

He was terrified that people were looking at him, for some reason, turning around, but everyone’s gaze was on the main door of Helen’s as it was neatly closed behind the tall, broad figure of Martin Blackwood, untangling a scarf from around his neck. If he was aware of all the stares on him, he didn’t show it, but people watched after him as he came up to the bar.

“Can I get a vodka bramble please, Helen?” he asked quietly, and then turned to Tim, whose features were abruptly quite pale and drawn. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Yeah,” Tim said. “Um, yeah, we’re just in the hall.”

Martin nodded, uncaring, apparently ignoring the horror writ in the lines of Tim’s face, his dark skin suddenly chalky in tone where all the blood had drained out of it, and then he looked to Jon, and smiled.

“Hi, Jon. Settled in better now?”

“Yes,” Jon said. “Thank you.”

“Good,” Martin said, taking up his cocktail when Helen passed it to him. “Shall we go and sit down?”

The group went suddenly quiet as Martin came to sit down: he sank down onto other end of the sofa from Basira and Daisy, and while it was a long sofa, there wasn’t quite a big enough gap to sit between them without touching either Daisy’s knees or Martin’s thigh, and Jon hesitated, but without awkwardly dragging over one of the heavy chairs that were further back…

He sank down, sitting in a tiny square to try to keep from touching either of them, and immediately Daisy unbent her legs, depositing her feet in Jon’s lap: surprised, Jon leaned back, but then he laughed slightly, feeling the slightest bit of tension go out of his shoulders. Daisy wasn’t looking at him when he glanced at her, but he allowed himself to rest the base of his wine glass on her ankles, exhaling.

“Where were you working today, Martin?” Basira asked. It was in a hard voice, that she asked the question: Melanie stiffened slightly, gritting her teeth, and Jon looked at Tim’s serious expression, Sasha’s concerned frown. Daisy was looking straight at Martin, not tearing her gaze away from him.

The only person that seemed entirely unconcerned was Michael, whose gaze was on the fire instead of the new interloper in their midst.

“Down by the docks,” Martin said mildly, as though everyone wasn’t staring daggers into him. “The Tundra will be in port the day after tomorrow – they’re preparing cargo.”

“Salesa?” Basira asked.

“I don’t really see how it’s any of your business.”

“We might look into it.”

“Go right ahead,” Martin said, unflinching. “It’s not my business either – I just lift and carry.”

Silence rang between them, punctuated only by the quiet crackle of the fire, and then Michael said, not looking away from the burning embers, “You linger under the sky, Martin. Don’t you know there are no stars above us?”

“Shut up, Michael,” Martin said, rolling his eyes, and turned to Sasha. Michael frowned, looking at Martin with a wounded twist to his mouth, but he didn’t protest, looking to his knees. “Has the library been very busy this week? They said you’re getting a new shipment in when the Tundra arrives.”

“Not too busy,” Sasha said, slowly, uncertainly, as though she were dipping her toe into normal conversation. “Not quite slow enough that all the new inventory will be easy to put away. We’ll get it done between us, though, won’t we, Michael?”

Michael didn’t react, apparently fixated on the coral fabric of his trousers, picking at his knees.

“I was saying to Jon he might ask you if he needed advice, Martin,” Tim said, and Martin glanced at Jon, raising his eyebrows.

“You’re a farmer, then,” Jon said, and Martin shook his head, dragging his fingers back and forth over the side of his glass.

“I have a plot of land with a small greenhouse, and I make jams and preserves,” Martin said quietly. “I don’t have _fields_. I just work on other people’s farms when they need help sowing or harvesting. And animals don’t like me, so I don’t work on the ranches.”

“Spiders like you,” Jon said.

It was apparently the wrong thing to say, because Melanie scoffed, loudly, and Basira released a low sound Jon didn’t know how to classify, a sort of sharp, “_Hmph_.”

Martin kept Jon’s gaze, and even as Jon looked at him, a pink flush came into his cheeks, brightening their round shape, and he glanced down at his glass, fidgeting. “Erm, well. Yeah.”

“You breed them?”

Martin nodded. “You don’t, um, you don’t like them.”

“No,” Jon said.

“You don’t like spiders?” Melanie asked, quickly. “You’re scared of them?”

Jon stared at her. “You aren’t?”

“Let’s all talk about what we’re frightened of, shall we?” Michael asked of his knees, in a soft and leading tone, and then did his funny little laugh.

“Let’s not,” Sasha said, and picked up Michael’s drink from the table where he’d not yet reached for it, pushing it into his hands. It was a hot drink in a mug, a creamy-looking cocoa that he thought Helen had put some liqueur into, and Michael took it, sipping delicately from its frothy surface. “Tim, is that drama with the Orsinovs still going on?”

“_God_,” Tim said, “the _saga_ of Danny and the Orsinovs!”

As Tim got into the meat of the most recent happenings in this apparent feud, he relaxed, and the atmosphere lost a lot of its heavily weighted tension as things evened out, going naturally to other topics. As Jon sat in place, listening, he watched the way that Tim and Sasha played off one another, the way that Tim brought in Melanie and Basira and Martin, too. Daisy didn’t contribute much, but laughed at jokes, and Michael… Michael would speak when spoken to.

Jon felt like the outsider, awkwardly nestled between Martin and Basira as everyone started to play off one another – they talked about Melanie’s clothes and the most recent article she’d written for the Echo; they talked about a call-out Basira and Daisy had had to go a few years back, a house party of students from the university, to walk in on a very badly co-ordinated orgy; they talked about what Martin was harvesting for the spring, and the jams he was going to enter into the preserves competition at the end of the month. Daisy was lending him hibiscus flowers to lend flavour profile to his raspberry jam.

It was plain to Jon that he was amongst a group of friends – he didn’t think that they were all necessarily friends with one another, but everyone here, except him, seemed to connect with at least one other person here.

And yet, everyone kept shooting Martin glances. Martin pretended not to notice – or at least, Jon was fairly certain he was pretending. He had to be. Jon was oblivious to some social cues, and he knew this, he knew that it was one of his weaknesses, but this was _obvious_.

Now and then, Jon would realise that Daisy was looking straight at Martin, lips drawn into a scowl, eyes unblinking; Sasha and Tim kept shooting him glances when other people were talking; Melanie clammed shut when Martin spoke, as if she didn’t want to engage with any conversation he led.

“What do you like to do in your free time, Jon?” Sasha asked, and Jon was quiet for a long few minutes.

“I read,” he said. “I play the piano, um, that’s being delivered out to me here. I like to cook.”

“What sort of things do you cook?” Martin asked.

“Traditional stews and gravies, um, I like to make desserts, um, biscuits, sponges… I’ve never made my own chutneys before, I’d like to do that now I’m here. I make my own roti. Do you— Do you cook much?”

“No,” Martin said. “I’m awful in the kitchen. I eat a lot of pasta.”

“Well, you must let me cook for you, some evening,” Jon said, and Martin stared at him. The slight burn was back in Martin’s cheeks, and after a few moments of Martin’s silent awe, Jon added, “To… to thank you. Obviously. For your— For the house, you know. As thanks.”

“Right,” Martin said. “Not because you enjoy my company or anything.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t!”

“It was a joke,” Martin said.

“Right. Well. Perhaps I don’t.”

Martin blinked at him, leaning back.

“That… that was a joke,” Jon said, weakly. “Too.”

Daisy laughed, tipping her head back, and said, “Christ, you two are a match.”

The night drew on.

\--

Helen’s closed at twelve o’clock.

As everyone stood to their feet, shrugging on their coats or setting their glasses aside, Jon watched in curiosity at the way people gathered together. The white-haired man – Michael had pointed him out to Jon as Mike Crew, a bookbinder and rare book specialist who assisted the library at times with restoration – had Simon Fairchild leaning on his arm, as though he were about to walk the old man across the road. Other groups of people seemed to come together to negotiate things, separating into twos and threes.

Jon noticed, observing, that no one walked out of the door alone.

Gerry Keay came forward, and Jon watched the way Melanie turned to face him as they talked together. Melanie, Jon noted, gesticulated while she talked – she kept her arms framed in so that she didn’t hit anybody by mistake, but she was a passionate woman with (from what he could glean) something of a temper, and she and Gerry seemed to speak to one another with animation, with passion, together.

“Michael, you coming?” Gerry asked.

Jon watched the way Michael’s head immediately came right down, his neck seeming to retract entirely into his shoulders, so that you could no longer make out his features, leaving only the cascading shift of glossy blond hair in view. He nodded, though, even with his gaze down at his feet, and when Gerry touched his shoulder, Jon heard him giggle, quietly.

Melanie rolled her eyes, giving Sasha a long-suffering look, but walked after the two of them.

“We’ll walk you home, Jon,” Tim said.

“You don’t have to,” Jon said, just to see what the response was. “I think I’ll be alright on my own, I know the way.”

Sasha and Tim exchanged a grave look. “No,” Sasha said, slowly. “I don’t think you should.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Martin said quietly. “If you don’t mind me walking over your farm to get home to mine, it’s quicker for me than walking around.”

“It doesn’t bother me who walks across it,” Jon said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tim said. He spoke tightly, and Jon could see the twitch of one of the muscles in his jaw, his fists clenched at his sides. He stepped forward, closer, right up to Martin, and Martin gave him a small smile.

“Don’t you?” Martin asked, in his soft, unassuming voice. “Why not?”

“Would’ve thought you wanted to walk home on your own,” Tim said. “Bet you find it peaceful, don’t you?” He was all but spitting at Martin, now, and Jon stepped between them, feeling tiny as he did it, what with the height of each of them.

“I think I’ll be fine walking with Martin, Tim, but thanks,” Jon said.

“Are you really scared of spiders, Jon?” Sasha asked, as though it was something serious, as though it were something important.

“Come on, Jon,” Martin murmured, and Jon followed after him, even feeling Tim’s gaze on his back. At the entrance to Helen’s, there were a set of lanterns leaned up against the wall, and Martin picked one of them up, lighting it from a wick and carrying it high as they stepped out into the street. The sensation of Martin’s other hand in his made Jon jump, surprised, but Martin held him tighter when Jon tried to tug away. “Sorry,” he said, glancing down at him. “It’s either this, or you take my arm.”

“What was all that about, Martin?” Jon asked, nodding back, and Martin sighed.

“I’ll, um, I’ll explain on the way,” he said quietly, and Jon walked beside him as they crossed the square. The lantern emitted a deep red glow of light, but it did not well-penetrate the looming darkness around them. The green tinge was still present on the air ahead of them, and Jon gripped more tightly at Martin’s hand as they crossed the neatly set cobbled brick of the square, toward the path he knew lead toward Balch Farm.

He couldn’t see more than about twenty feet ahead of them, and what seemed to be beyond that was just swirling green: once more, the strange, foreboding sensation that had plagued him earlier had insinuated itself under his skin, slithering into the space between his bones and making itself at home in his joints and the base of his belly.

“I know this sounds like, um, bollocks,” Martin said. “But try not to think about it.”

Martin squeezed his hand, and, distracted, Jon looked down at it. Martin’s hand was big and strong and warm, just as it had been when Jon had shook it the last day, and Jon wondered when he had last held someone’s hand for as long as this. He’d held Georgie’s hand, at university, he thought, but it had been when they were sat down together – they’d held hands while watching television together, or idly interlocked their fingers while doing a jigsaw together, but never _walked_ like this, hand in hand.

“Why didn’t they want you to walk me home? Do they think you might murder me?” Jon asked.

“Something like that,” Martin said.

It made a cold thrill run down Jon’s spine, and he tried to concentrate on the heat of Martin’s hand in his, the weight of Martin’s form beside his. He realised, in that moment, just how silent the night was: he heard no birds, no wind in the trees either side of the path they walked down, no sound of distant cars, or the shore, or anything. He couldn’t even hear the crunch of the road beneath their feet.

“They certainly panicked when they realised you’d walked to Helen’s in the dark.”

“It’s different when you’re walking home,” Martin said. “Home is… home is sacrosanct, even in Brynwylio. There’s a sort of binding tether between you and your land, or your bed. It isn’t about like, your blood, and it isn’t about legal binding or ownership. It’s about where you rest, where you exist at your most…”

“Peaceful?” Jon asked, when Martin trailed off.

“Vulnerable,” Martin said.

“Oh.”

“It’s, um… I don’t know, you can ask different people about it, but you leave a piece of yourself in a place you love, a place you occupy, just as it leaves its mark on you. No one really likes anyone to walk home on their own, but especially you, because you’re not really settled in at Balch Farm yet.”

Something moved behind them. It was a sudden, sharp movement, making a rushing sound, and Jon turned to look over his shoulder, but all he saw was deep, green-tinged darkness at the edge of the lantern’s glow, and the way that he and Martin’s shadows faded into it.

“What’s on the grille on your window, Martin?” Jon asked.

“I don’t have grilles on my windows, Jon,” said Martin.

Jon felt suddenly very, very cold.

“What about the wind in winter?” he asked, and Martin looked down at him. Lit by the glow of the lantern, the planes of his face were set in strange relief: his eyes seemed suddenly very dark, their colour more red than brown, and somehow he seemed impossibly, impossibly big.

“You’ve figured out by now it’s got nothing to do with that,” Martin said.

Jon stopped walking, and Martin stopped beside him, still holding his hand.

“We shouldn’t stop,” Martin said softly.

“What are they frightened you’ll do to me?” Jon asked.

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“I notice you haven’t said you _won’t_ do anything to me.”

“Why would I say that?”

Jon’s stomach felt as though it were full of snakes. They _writhed_ inside him, twisting and making the bile rise steadily in his throat, and this time when he tried to pull his hand away, Martin didn’t tighten his grip at all, but Jon was still held fast: there was something sticky, fibrous, clinging to his palm, and he heard himself saying, “No, no,” in a sharp, quavering voice before he even though the words.

“Let me walk you home, Jon,” Martin said softly,

“Let me go,” Jon said, hearing the crack in his own voice. “Let me go, let me go _now_, let me—”

“No, Jon,” Martin said. “I can’t do that. Come on.”

“No, no, no, no, let me _go_, let me _go_—!”

“Shh, shh, hey, hey,” Martin said, tenderly taking Jon’s wrists as he had before, in the house, comforting, big and comforting, but Martin’s hands were sticky and there were tears on Jon’s cheeks, burning at the corners of his eyes as he tried to stumble back, and how was Martin holding the lantern when both of his hands were on Jon’s, how was he stroking the side of Jon’s cheek, that was too many hands, too many—

Jon screamed as thick, sticky thread was painted over his lips, screamed and struggled and tried to pull his wrists apart, as Martin said, “Shh, Jon, you need to calm down, you’re drawing too much attention, shh—”

Jon screamed again, and he saw Martin’s face, the pinched furrow of his brow, the twist of his lips, and then heard him sigh.

Jon thought Martin was hugging him until he felt the sudden, sharp pinch at his throat.

\--

Jon woke very slowly.

Awareness came to him in degrees: he was aware, first, of the light in the room, the morning sun peeking in through the gaps in the curtains, the pleasant heat of it; he was aware, second, of the weight of the blankets laid over his body, how comfortable he was. He was still dressed, he realised, in his shirt and his boxers, instead of his pyjamas – he still had a tie in his hair.

Realisation struck suddenly, memory coming to the surface in much the same way broken bone pierces skin, and he shot up in bed, heaving in a gasp, touching at his wrists and dragging his fingers over his lips, then feeling around at his neck.

He was clean, but there was a scab to the side of his pulse point, a scab half the size of his littlest fingernail, and he looked around wildly for a sign of Martin, but found none.

On his bedside table, beside his neatly folded glasses, his phone, his housekeys and wallet, there was a tall glass of water, and a note scrawled on parchment paper. Jon took two tries to pick it up, his fingers were shaking so badly, and he stared down at the cramped, scrawling hand.

_Dear Jon,_

_I’m sorry to have frightened you last night, and I’m sorry I had to knock you out – if you’d panicked anymore, you would have caused an altercation, and I’m not sure I would have been able to protect you. You’ll probably be a bit dehydrated, and maybe a little hungrier than usual when you sit down to eat._

_I understand if you want to retract the invitation to dinner._

_Martin_

There was a knock downstairs on the door, so loud it made Jon jerk and shut his eyes tightly closed, and then he stumbled out of his bed, dragging on his dressing down and descending the stair.

Mayor Bouchard was on his doorstep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be no pet death in this story. Just so you know!

Jon tied his dressing gown more tightly around himself before he unlocked the door and drew it open. Standing in his bare feet and wishing his dressing gown was thicker and longer, he looked seriously at Bouchard, glancing past him at the blue skies, still tinged peach – it was scarcely even an hour past dawn.

“Good morning, Jon,” Bouchard said warmly. “Made a safe trip home last night?”

Jon didn’t know quite how to respond to that, shifting on his bare feet and leaning on the jamb of the door, his arms crossed over his chest. Bouchard was a short man, and he was made to look up at Jon’s face, but he had impeccable posture, his shoulders back, his chin high. It was the sort of posture Jon’s grandmother would have commented on, would have patted him on the back and told him he ought emulate.

“Can I do something for you, Mayor Bouchard?” Jon asked.

“Actually, yes,” Bouchard said immediately, as though he’d been waiting for it. “I had a favour to ask you.”

Jon inhaled, pressing his lips together. “Suppose I asked for that,” he muttered, and looked at Bouchard expectantly as he stepped back off of Jon’s porch, picking something small out of a wicker basket—

“_Oh_,” Jon murmured, putting his hands out reflexively, and the kitten mewed softly as Bouchard deposited it in his hands. Sprawling back in his palms, it looked up at Jon with brightly green eyes, heavily lidded with evident fatigue.

“He’s thirteen weeks,” Bouchard said mildly. “I was rather at a loss with him, truth be told – Peter and I already have five cats in the house, and his mother aside, they’re all rather elderly – they don’t much care for having young kittens rushing about the place. The others of the litter have already been given homes, of course, but…”

“May— _Elias_, I can’t have a cat,” Jon said, even as he caught one of the kitten’s paws with his thumb, a grin twisting his lips even as he tried to hold it back.

“I brought you a litter tray, some food for him… His mother is a venerable hunter of spiders.”

Jon stared down at the kitten in his hands, at the black and white patches over his face, his bright pink toes, his bright eyes. He looked, then, to Elias, his serious expression, no hint of humour in his face.

“Oh,” Jon murmured. “Is that what this is about?”

“He can stay with us if you really don’t like the idea of having a cat,” Elias said quietly. “But I thought you’d rather appreciate not having the cottage to yourself, and you do _like_ cats, don’t you?”

“How did you know that?”

“You mentioned it last night.

“You weren’t _there_ last night.”

The silence between them didn’t last long, but communicated multitudes, effecting a strange tension on the air.

“Word gets around, Jon,” Elias said.

“Is that what it does?”

The kitten was yawning plaintively, making grabbing motions toward the front of Jon’s dressing gown, and when he brought it closer to his chest, it immediately dug its claws into his skin, making him hiss as it tried to make itself at home against his shoulder.

“He seems very tired.”

“Well, he had a night of exhausting work – he brought down the curtain rail in my office twelve times in the course of the evening.”

“Perhaps he wanted to see outside,” Jon said. Elias didn’t react, his expression remaining completely neutral, and Jon inwardly marked the point on his side of his board.

“The veterinary surgery is beside my office, in town,” Elias said as he stood back, picking up a box that seemed packed to the brim with cat food, cat litter, and a variety of toys, with a bed and a litter tray on top. “Spaying and neutering is free in Brynwylio, you know, Jon.”

“Come in, Elias,” Jon said, stepping into the house, and when Elias stepped over the threshold, he closed the door shut, watching the particular, fastidious way that Elias wiped his heeled boots on the brush mat beside the door, stepping after Jon into the living room and setting the box down on the coffee table.

Depositing the kitten on the ground, Jon slipped into the kitchen, filling the kettle with water and setting it on the stove, putting out two mugs for tea.

When he came back into the living room, Elias was sitting down in the rocking chair with the cat curled up in his lap, purring far more loudly than Jon would have expected from such a small animal.

“I’ve put the kettle on. Give me a minute, I’ll just put some clothes on, and then we can talk.”

“You needn’t on my account,” Elias replied evenly, glancing down at Jon’s thighs, which Jon chose to ignore.

When he’d come downstairs again in proper clothes, although he was wearing slippers instead of shoes, the kettle was beginning to come to a boil, and he made tea for the both of them. Sinking down onto one of the sofas and holding out the other tea for Elias, he inwardly braced himself for what was undoubtedly going to be another one of those strange conversations. Elias did not seem at all uncomfortable in a stranger’s house: he sank back in the rocking chair as though it had been his regular seat of many years, and the cat purred loudly in its place.

“How big was the litter?”

“Only three,” Elias murmured, playing his finger under the kitten’s chin. “Calypso went to work with Peter, and Gertrude Robinson took Sylvia. This young lad is a bit lazier and somewhat less sociable than Calypso or Sylvia, as curious as he is, so he wasn’t exactly suited to be a ship’s cat or a dedicated member of a local establishment.”

“No name?”

“I try not to name them,” Elias murmured. “Helps one not to get too attached. We will be having Lucille neutered, this time – slippery little minx always manages to escape and enjoy her nights on the town, but not _this_ time.”

Jon reached out, putting his fingers forward, and the kitten grabbed at his hand, playful, but not bothering to roll off of its back and out from its bed of Elias’ knees.

“I suppose you’re here to talk to me about what happened last night,” Jon said.

“What _did_ happen last night?”

“Word hasn’t gotten around?”

“You’ll find Martin Blackwood doesn’t exactly keep others in the loop,” Elias said, and Jon laughed, a bitter noise. A part of him wanted to believe that everything that had happened last night had only been some sort of strange, vivid nightmare, but he knew that it wasn’t true – he would have known it even without Elias Bouchard sitting primly in his living room, treating it in all serious, but _with_ him?

“Peter is your husband, I suppose,” Jon said.

“For my sins,” Elias replied. “Captain Peter Lukas, of the Tundra.”

“The Tundra is back in port tomorrow,” Jon murmured. “Trying to get rid of all Lucille’s kittens before he gets back?”

“Peter grows so easily attached to that which he oughtn’t,” Elias said.

“I bet,” Jon said in a low mutter.

Elias’ laugh was a cool and quiet thing, but he didn’t break away from Jon’s gaze – he was unashamed, and easy about it, gently scooping up the kitten and passing him over to Jon. Jon didn’t drop him immediately into his lap, instead gently setting him on the cushion beside him, but he wanted warmth and comfort, it seemed, and he immediately threw himself over Jon’s knees all the same, trying to clamber up beneath Jon’s cardigan and nestle in his armpit.

Jon allowed it, holding the pudgy little kitten in the crook of his arm, curling his tail around his fingers.

“He’ll eat spiders?”

“Of course,” Elias said. “You could say the cats of Brynwylio have a… natural enmity.”

“Spiders are brilliant for one’s home, I’m told. Keep other pests to a minimum—”

“Have you seen other pests, Jon?” Elias asked softly, his tone delicate, deliberate, as though the words were intended to play a complicated instrument. “A spider is not just a spider. Not when you look at one, anyway.”

“Because I’m frightened of them, you mean? Melanie King seemed to find that to be very important.”

“Melanie King is a dunce,” Elias said sharply: it was the first sign Jon had seen of his losing control, his hands tightening into fists, his lip curling into an ever-so-slight snarl, but then Elias turned away, looking at the grating on Jon’s windows. “The woman thinks only of herself, and her partner – she has no sense of community.”

Jon watched, with interest, the process of Elias reeling in his fury, the way he forced his expression to even out, pushed the scowl from his lips and the furrow from his brow, saw him relax his hands and flex them before setting them back on his knees.

“Do you have grating on your windows?” Jon asked.

“No,” Elias said. “No, I don’t. What with Peter and I in the same house… Ah, but that will mean very little to you, of course.”

“Are you capable of saying anything _without_ being cryptic?”

“Clarity will come to you, Jon,” Elias said softly. “But when it does, I have no doubt you will wish it hadn’t.”

“Martin said he didn’t have grates on his windows, either,” Jon said slowly, tapping his fingers against his knee and glancing down at the cat nestled against him. It was obvious Elias wasn’t going to be _less_ cryptic, so in the mean time… “Martin walked from the docks to Helen’s bar, and everyone acted like he’d walked through the fires of Hell. And no one wanted to let him walk me home.”

Elias nodded his head.

“You don’t have _anything_ to say to that?”

“You think I have the answers?”

“I’m sure you do.”

“When a student cannot ask the right question,” Elias said, very slowly, seeming to think about it very carefully, “one might posit that he is not ready for the answers.”

“Alright, here’s a question – what the fuck is going on in Brynwylio?”

“Better,” Elias said. “Not quite on the money, though, Jon.”

“What—”

“Why don’t I ask a question?”

Jon was quiet, listening to the loud purr of the kitten shoved inside his cardigan, feeling it breathe softly against the side of his belly.

Satisfied, Elias leaned back in the rocking chair, and asked, “Why did you come to Brynwylio?”

“I needed a break.”

“So many do. What from?”

“I… I don’t know. Work. The city. Stress.”

“Stress?”

“Yes, _stress_.”

“What made you stressed?”

“Research involves a lot of hours for not a massive deal of pay – and the research I was doing, it didn’t feel as though I were impacting anyone. I barely had any time to myself, and not a great amount of money to show for it.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean, _what else_?”

“What made you choose?”

“What made me _choose_?”

“What makes Brynwylio different to anywhere else?”

“I already had the deed to this house.”

“What makes this house different to houses in London?””

“Well, it’s— Quiet.”

“Is it?”

“I wanted to sleep better.”

“Have you?”

Jon stared at him, feeling his lips part, and he looked away from Elias, trying to think. He’d spent a few nights in Brynwylio, now, each one of them in the attic bedroom of this quaint, funny little cottage, and yet…

“Yes,” he said, hearing the surprise in his own voice.

“You had nightmares before, didn’t you?”

“Yes. All my life.”

“But not here,” Elias murmured, smiling slightly. “Not in Brynwylio.”

“No,” Jon said, slowly. In all his lifetime, he didn’t think he’d gone so many days in a row without a bad dream, let alone a nightmare – he’d had tough nightmares since he was a child, since—

Long, stiff hairs, shining eyes, a rotund and bulging abdomen, _KNOCK KNOCK_—

“You should answer that,” Elias said quietly, and Jon glanced up at him. “Shouldn’t you?”

“It’s Martin,” Jon said. “You get it.”

Elias stood from the rocking chair, and Jon watched him move out into the corridor, listened to the lock click as Elias undid the latch, heard it open.

“Elias.”

“_Martin_. Care to come in?”

Jon couldn’t hear them speak to one another, but he got the impression, somehow, that there was a communication passing between Elias and Martin that he couldn’t have understood even if he _was_ standing beside Elias, even if he _was_ watching.

He did hear the creak of the step as Martin stepped back, heard retreating steps.

When Elias stepped back into the doorway, for just a moment, there was a strange effect, one that made Jon blink his eyes a few times behind his glasses, like he’d looked at a mirage under too bright sun—

But it was just Elias, then, a little man in a pinstriped waistcoat, his green eyes focused on Jon.

“It’s about territory, isn’t it?” Jon said. “The grating, the enmity with Martin.”

Elias smiled. “_Yes_,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

“You won’t tell me more?”

Elias smiled, coming back to the table, and he reached down for his mug, bringing it to his mouth and draining it before he set it back down. “Thank you for the tea, Jon, but I must go home. So many preparations to see to before Peter comes home.”

“How long have you been married?”

“What a deceptively difficult question,” Elias murmured. “I’ll leave you to your day’s work.”

\--

The day’s early afternoon found Jon in his yard, scrubbing down the kegs and preserves jars from his cellar. He was aching even before he’d hauled it all up the stairs and into the light – he’d put a good many new chopped logs into the wood shed, on top of getting new soil tilled, sowed, and watered – but the cold water that misted from the hose was a soothing balm on his skin, and the muscle underneath.

The newly-named Attenborough sat on top of Jon’s shipping container and watched him with interest, but he didn’t move to involve himself – he slept for twenty minutes and then raised his head to watch Jon in turns, showing himself to be remarkably docile.

Jon did expect Martin to come back, so it was no surprise when he came over to the house from one of the paths Jon hadn’t actually walked up yet – it seemed like dozens of thoroughfares lead off from Balch Farm, and he didn’t know what to do with any of them, because none of them were marked on the map he’d printed out.

“Do you want a hand?” he called out as he approached.

“No, thank you,” Jon said. “I’m nearly finished.”

Martin walked up to the edge of the path, watching as Jon dragged a scrubbing brush over the inside of the last of the kegs, brushing out the dust. There had been handwritten manuals, complete with recipes, for wines, juices, and preserves behind the pile, products of Balch Farm in the past, and he wanted to give them a go, even just for the sake of his curiosity, to see how he fared.

“Going to start making wine again?”

“Maybe,” Jon said.

Martin stepped off the path, toward him, and Attenborough stirred from his sleep, glancing at him. Immediately, the little cat was on his feet, tail up like a bottle brush, his fur on end as he hissed furiously, and Jon looked between the cat and Martin.

This wasn’t a surprise, either.

Martin stepped back onto the path, away from Jon, and he set his mouth into a thin line, glaring at Attenborough as though the two of them were mortal enemies, and Jon reached back for him, gently stroking two fingers down Attenborough’s ruffled-up, black-and-white fur.

The cat didn’t back down, keeping his gaze on Martin, and Jon leaned back against the shipping bin, keeping the cat in line with his shoulder.

“I wondered why Elias had come round,” Martin said quietly. Something had faded away from him, in the past few moments, like a paling had dropped: Martin seemed to stand taller, and there was more severity in his expression, in the way that he held himself. “You shouldn’t trust him, you know.”

“And everyone else in town? I shouldn’t trust them, either?”

“Jon, if I was somehow _dangerous_, would everyone invite me out for drinks?” From someone else, it could easily have sounded condescending, but it didn’t come off that way, not from Martin in this moment. If anything, it sounded plaintive, tired – the sort of tone you heard from anybody used to being piled on. “Do you think Tim and Sasha, Basira, Daisy – do you think anyone would want to have anything to do with me?”

“They didn’t trust you to walk me home. They seemed to think you’d hurt me.”

“And did I?” Martin asked. He genuinely sounded wounded when he asked, “Do you really think I would?”

Jon had always hated ambiguity.

Social situations in any situation had always been a source of stress – judging whether people were being genuine or not was difficult, what with how some people would present themselves as being entirely sincere even whilst they were mocking you, and this situation was no different.

Martin felt _real_, he felt _genuine_ – Elias didn’t, but why would he bother with the effort, if he wasn’t somehow invested?

Jon hated people.

“You know, if someone would tell me what was going on,” Jon said, “perhaps I’d be inclined to trust them.”

“Did Elias tell you why this town is called Brynwylio?” Martin asked. “What it means?”

Jon shook his head. Attenborough hadn’t torn his gaze away from Martin, but he had lowered down some of his fur, and he moved closer to Jon, leaning into the side of his neck and his shoulder: Jon could feel him trembling. Maybe most people were better judges of people, but Jon… Jon was happy to rely on his cat, for now.

“Watch Hill,” Martin said. “That’s what it’s called, in English. It’s named for the Watcher’s Seat – it’s a stone outcrop up high on the valley side, where, if you stand on it, you can see the whole of the valley from top to bottom. Hikers walk out to it, sometimes – apparently, it’s where Brynwylio’s founder first sat down to plan out the town. That’s why there’s all those eye symbols everywhere – he designed them, Jonah Magnus.”

“And what, Elias is this man’s great grand nephew?”

Martin exhaled through his nose, not quite a huff of laughter. “Something like that,” he said. “Jon, last night, I didn’t mean to scare you as much as I did – but if I’d let you go, if I’d let you run off…” Martin trailed off, slowly shaking his head. “You were panicked, upset. You would have gotten lost in the mist.”

“And what would have happened to me then, Martin?” Jon asked softly, “Would it have been better or worse than what Tim and Sasha were frightened you’d do to me?”

“Worse,” Martin said, without hesitation. “There’s… It’s hard to explain. I hope you know I’m not trying to hide answers from you. But there’s a price paid for living here, in Brynwylio – there are _rules_, tolls that have to be paid. Trust me when I say you don’t want to be paying them.”

“What would you do, Martin?” Jon asked softly. “If you were in my position?”

“Don’t trust Elias,” Martin said. “And— Tim, Sasha, all that lot, they _mean_ well, but they go along with Elias. They have to – Elias has more control over the library than anyone else, and he’s the Stokers’ landlord, you know. And, um… I would try to set up your wi-fi as soon as you can, before Elias tries to block it.”

“I noticed there were no computers in the library. Why is that?”

“The library doesn’t have electricity. Most of the businesses in the valley don’t – most of the houses don’t, either. It’s in Elias’ interest, you know, if people are isolated from the outside world.”

“Well, thank you for the advice,” Jon said, and he felt an odd tug in his chest as Martin nodded, taking another step down the path.

“Um,” Martin said, “are you— are you still alright, with me cutting over your land? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“No, I don’t mind,” Jon said immediately. “And, um, you should still join me for dinner, some night.”

“Want to milk me for more information?”

“Well, it would be rude to come over for a meal and not answer any of my questions.”

Martin seemed so relieved. A tension seeped out of his shoulders, and he relaxed, sighing softly, running a hand through his hair. He glanced back at Jon, then, and said softly, “You seem to be a good person, Jon. I really don’t want you to get dragged into it with Elias and the rest.”

“And where would you drag me instead?”

Martin laughed, softly, shaking his head. “I don’t want to drag you anywhere,” he murmured. “I just— I just want you to be able to see things as they are, that’s all. I think that you deserve that, at least.”

“Well,” Jon murmured. “Thank you.”

\--

When the night drew in, Jon found himself moving on autopilot, once again, closing all the curtains in the house – he didn’t realise he was doing it until he leaned over to close the blinds in the kitchen, and noticed Attenborough watching him, his head tilted to the side, his expression curious.

“It is strange, isn’t it?” Jon asked, and Attenborough leaned forward, butting his little head against Jon’s when Jon leaned down to meet him, stroking his fingers down the cat’s spine.

Jon had almost feared, of the cat food he’d been brought, to see the label of some local meat producer, whatever horrible thing that meant, but the food was fish-based, and it was a national brand.

He wasn’t really cognizant of how early it was until he actually slid into bed – it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but he felt _tired_, bone-tired, in a way that went beyond the ache in his shoulders and his back from working all day.

The past few days, he’d woken up feeling well-rested and refreshed in a way he never had before, but he didn’t usually ever go to bed so early, back in London. No wonder it was so easy to wake up each morning at six AM, lying down to sleep at this time.

It was unnatural. Of course it was unnatural, it had to be – childhood trauma, much to Jon’s chagrin, didn’t exactly evaporate overnight, and nightmares should have been included in that, no matter that he was going to bed earlier, no matter that he was physically fatigued when he laid down.

Because he wasn’t dreaming, was he? He wasn’t just not having nightmares – he wasn’t dreaming _at all_, not that he could remember. He might not have had nightmares every night his entire life, but he certainly _dreamed_ every night.

The pillow was abruptly depressed by the purring little mass of Attenborough, and Jon reached for him, letting him pad quickly over to collapse against Jon’s neck, burrowing into where he could best feel Jon’s heartbeat. Jon winced slightly as tiny little needle pricks began to knead against his collar bone, pushing a little bit of his shirt fabric between Attenborough’s paws and his skin. Attenborough purred even louder.

The curtains in the attic room were black-out curtains, entirely blocked out everything outside, even light that peeked from the edges, but he could almost make out movement outside – the movement of something sweeping past the window, something…

Jon closed his eyes, turning on his side and pressing his chin more against the top of Attenborough’s furry little body, feeling him vibrate with the strength of his purr, far too big of a sound to come from such a tiny cat.

He slept soundly – and dreamlessly, of course.

He wished that sleep had brought answers.

**Author's Note:**

> For the time being, I'm no longer writing fanfic: I publish original works now. 
> 
> My debut novel, Heart of Stone, is a slice-of-life romance between a vampire and his personal secretary, and I hope it's the first of many. 
> 
> You can check out more about my published work [here](https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/post/629449536272826368/landing-page). I am also on Twitter. 
> 
> Thanks so much for your support and your wonderful feedback on my fanfic! It's been essential in pushing myself to move toward original work.


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